The invention relates generally to management of data storage resources.
Over the past decade, there have been changes in the marketplace that have had a significant impact on the corporate product delivery environment. Companies and corporate organizations that were at one time totally self-sufficient have chosen to focus development resources solely on products and services that relate to core competencies, and out-source all others. For example, companies that were not in the database business but once had their own proprietary databases have migrated to the use of off the shelf databases from software suppliers.
Further changes are occurring as such companies are faced with new competitive pressures and challenges. Efforts to scale infrastructure to meet ever-increasing demands in areas of bandwidth, computational power and storage are placing tremendous burdens on corporate enterprises. Also, because the World Wide Web has enabled commercial entities with little overhead and few resources to create the appearance of a business of the same type and scale as a much larger company, larger companies have found that they cannot afford the cost of the infrastructure changes if they are to remain competitive. Also of concern is the rising cost of services.
Consequently, companies looking for ways to do more with less are re-evaluating internal services to further refine their market focus, thus making way for a new set of out services and service providers, including the following: (i) the Internet Service Provider (ISP) to provide connectivity; (ii) the Storage Service Provider (SSP) to provide storage resources, e.g., allocate usage of storage devices; (iii) the Application Service Provider (ASP) to provide computational platforms and applications; (iv) the Floorspace Service Provider (FSP) to provide floorspace for rent with all the necessary connections; and the Total Service Provider (TSP) to provide all of the services of providers (i) through (iv) in one package. All of these service providers can be referred to generally as “xSPs”.
In addition, just as companies are relying more on out-sourcing of products and services, Information Technology (IT) departments within the largest of companies look to reposition themselves as TSPs for their internal customers. They may use outside service providers, but that out-sourcing will be hidden from the internal user. This service delivery approach translates into an environment of tiered service providers—each one providing the same services to each of their customers.